They are egg cases from a juvenile thorny skate. The skate is related to sharks and rays. Sharks, skates, and rays all have a skeleton made up of cartilage, the flexible material that is found in our noses and ears. One tiny skate will hatch from each egg after nine months – hatching under the surface of the water. Usually, what we see wrapped up in the seaweed “wrack line” is the discarded egg cases. Another nickname for these egg cases is the “mermaid’s purse.” Check out this BCS post to learn the difference between skates and rays.

Image (c) NOAA – Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Do you have another great question? Email info@beachchairscientist.com!

Let me guess, they look like tiny volcanoes? And they hurt if you rub up against them?
That is the outer shell made of calcium. They put this protective layer up when they are not under water.
When it is hide tide the acorn barnacle opens up the volcanoes structure and extends tiny little legs (cirri) all about to gather food circulating in the ocean water.
If you have digested this correctly, you now know the acorn barnacle finds a suitable spot once it is “an adult” and stays there for THE REST OF THEIR LIFE. gulp.

Laughing gulls, or Larus atricilla, are quite aggressive. These birds travel up and down the coasts and never have to stray far inland. They are extremely confident and spend their days foraging food from overly-relaxed beach goers. They will easily push larger birds, for instance, a pelican, right out of the way in order to grab the goodies.

These birds do have a black cap of feathers, but, it changes to white in the off breeding season.

A lot of people think it is because of the reflection of the sky, but, that is missing an important part of the puzzle. If you think about it the ocean is not really blue everywhere, is it?

What needs to be said is that sunlight particles may be reflected by the surface of the water, but, some may not. The sun contains all colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Yellow and red are absorbed immediately within the surface of the water leaving the green and blue to our naked eye.

What does this have to do with the fact that the ocean isn’t blue everywhere? Well, that all depends on what is in the oceans too. Different things absorb the sunlight differently. If the ocean floor is bare, the ocean appears crystalline blue. If there is a lot of plant life (phytoplankton, other plants or organic materials) it will generally appear greener.

But we’ve only scratched the surface here. Check back often at beachchairscientist.com for more insight about your favorite beach discoveries.

Well, yes there’s the sand, but there is also an unrecognized and perhaps even shocking biodiversity that lies not quite below the surface.

Would you believe me if I told you that in a single handful of wet sand you could be holding a community of organisms equaling, if not exceeding, the diversity found in an Amazonian rainforest?

All too often we suffer from a bias of scale, but biodiversity includes all organisms, including the mega-, the micro- and the meiofauna.

So just who are the meiofauna?

They are the smallest animals on earth—some no larger than a grain of sand.

They live in ultra-micro habitats within habitats and make an excellent example of the complexity of ecosystems and the interconnectedness of life.

The meiofauna aren’t a kind of animal, but rather a size-class of animals that live (mostly) in and among aquatic and marine sediments. (Fully 25 animal phyla have representatives in the meiofauna and they boast some of the most unique and strange biological adaptations in the Animal Kingdom.)

Without a microscope and a little curiosity, you’d probably never notice they were there…but you’d certainly notice if they weren’t…

Among the roles meiofaunal animals play in their environment is that of the decomposer. Beaches without a strong meiofaunal component have a distinctive, sulphuric odor of decay.

The meiofauna provide even more proof that there will always be new discoveries to be made in the marine environment—not just for us, but for all of science.

The newest animal groups described have been meiofaunal—three entirely new phyla described in the last 25 years. Exploring the meiofauna opens a whole new world discovery for even the most jaded, know-it-all, marine biologist!

But we’ve only scratched the surface here. Check back often at beachchairscientist.com for more about some of my favorite meiofauna.

By Jim Wharton, Director, Center for School and Public Programs with Mote Marine Laboratory

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